Able Was I…
by Bar Sira
Summary: An abandoned story from my Qoheleth account, reposted here out of sentiment. When Zatanna, on a visit to Gotham City, finds herself suddenly casting dangerous spells without meaning to, she suspects that her power has been cursed - but can she fix the problem without playing into her enemy's hands?
1. Sorceress in the City

GOTHAM CITY WELCOMES THE MAID OF MAGIC!

Zatanna smiled up at the banner hanging from the Wayne Foundation building's windows. She was feeling sublimely pleased with herself and the world – and, it must be confessed, not without reason. After all, she was young, she was beautiful, she was essentially omnipotent, and she was just starting a week-long gig in a city that was already lining up to fall at her feet; what more could a young woman desire?

She sighed contentedly, tossed her long, black hair back over her shoulders, and turned to continue her stroll through Gotham's market district. This was her favorite part of a new show: the afternoon of the first day, when all the details of lodging and scheduling had been taken care of, her first performance was still ahead of her, and she was free to wander aimlessly around, soaking up the atmosphere of the new city. To people whose knowledge of Gotham was limited to what they saw on _America's Greatest Crimefighters_ , and who consequently had a vague impression of it as a dark, brooding city where you could barely see the clouds for the Bat-Signals, it might have seemed surprising that anyone could derive such pleasure from wandering through its streets, but that was a feeling born of ignorance; at 3 o'clock on a July afternoon, with the waves lapping the docks and the sun glinting merrily off the Clocktower, it was all but impossible to remember that this was the city the _New York Times_ had dubbed "America's headquarters for macabre iniquity".

Yet Zatanna would have done well to remember this, all the same – for, among the thousands of people in Gotham who thrilled to the great enchantress's presence in their city, there was one who saw her arrival not as a privilege, but as an opportunity: an opportunity to settle old scores, and to test the full potency of his particular brand of evil.

* * *

"Miss Zatanna?"

Zatanna turned, and smiled at a little boy who was running up behind her, cupping something in his hand. "Yes?" she said.

"I have something to give you," the boy said. "Hold out your hand."

Zatanna did so, and then blinked in puzzlement at the green, puckered objects the boy poured into her hand. "Lime peels?" she said.

The boy nodded. "A man at one of the fruit stands told me to give them to you," he said. "He said that chewing lime peels made people's voices stronger and prettier, so he thought you should have some, free of charge. After all, we want your voice to be as good as it can tonight."

"Oh." said Zatanna. "Well, that's very kind of him. Tell him thank you for me."

As the boy turned and walked away, however, she frowned down at the small scraps of citrus skin. Lime peel as a throat-strengthener? She'd never heard that one before.

Of course, that didn't mean it wasn't true. There were a lot of folk medicines she'd never heard of; in fact, by and large, she tried to avoid learning about that particular subject, since there were few better ways of deflecting allegations of witchcraft than by genuinely not knowing what monkshood was good for. (Her father had avoided astronomy classes for a similar reason.) So probably the gift was completely innocent – but, still, it seemed wise to check.

" _Laever ruoy yrehcaert,_ " she whispered, in a stern, commanding tone. (The tone wasn't a necessary part of the magic, but it made her feel important.)

Nothing happened. The lime peels sat in her hand, completely unaffected by the mystic command.

For Zatanna, that was sufficient. If something wasn't affected by one of her spells, it could only be because the spell didn't apply to it – and that meant that the peels had no " _yrehcaert_ " about them. Satisfied, she tore a piece off of one of them and popped it into her mouth.

And, having done so, she almost immediately spat it out again. A raw citrus peel is not the sweetest thing in the world, and this one, being taken from a lime of the Omani variety, was particularly bitter: it would have tasted foul to just about anyone, let alone a half-Chinese enchantress who had inherited her mother's sensitive taste buds.

Zatanna wrinkled her nose, and discreetly dropped the rest of the lime peels into a nearby trash can. "Oh, well, it was a nice idea," she murmured, "but it looks as though my throat is on its own tonight."

Shortly thereafter, she turned into Busiek Avenue and lost herself among that street's forest of flower stalls, and forgot all about the little boy's gift – at least, until later that evening.


	2. Showtime

" _Sdihcro raeppa!_ " Zatanna proclaimed.

There was a puff of red smoke, and a bouquet of white orchids appeared in her hand. The crowd applauded enthusiastically, and Zatanna smiled to herself. _It doesn't really take much to make people happy,_ she reflected.

"Well, now, what have we here?" she exclaimed, with an affectation of surprise as charming as it was absurd. The audience laughed appreciatively, and Zatanna buried her face in the bouquet and heaved a sigh of delight. (There was no affectation about this: orchids had always been her favorite flowers.)

"Beautiful, aren't they?" she said.

The murmur from the audience confirmed that they were, indeed, beautiful.

"Yes," said Zatanna, "but the problem is, I don't think I'll be able to take them with me where I'm going. I know," she added, as though just getting a bright idea; "why doesn't one of you hold on to them for me, and I'll pick them back up when I come here tomorrow night?"

This was a standard tactic that she used whenever she had a multi-evening engagement. Besides providing a degree of continuity between the various nights' programs, it also ensured that at least one member of the first night's audience would show up for the second night's show (or rather, since it was usually the children in the audience, who volunteered, one whole family).

It worked in Gotham as well as it had worked anywhere. About two-thirds of the children in the audience instantly started waving their hands in the air and shouting, "Ooh, me! Me, Zatanna! Pick me!" Ah, youth. Zatanna remembered being that age, back before her mother's death and her father's abduction by an evil spirit had necessitated some speedy growing up on her part.

She glanced over the crowd and selected a small, blonde girl in the seventh row. "How about you?" she said. "Do you think you can take care of them for me?"

The girl nodded vigorously.

"All right, then," said Zatanna. "Catch!"

" _Ylf,_ " she whispered to the bouquet as she tossed it into the air.

And " _ylf_ " it did. As soon as it left her hand, it began to drift, lazily yet purposefully, towards the high-vaulted ceiling of Meredith Hall. The audience, which had not been expecting this touch, caught its collective breath as the bunch of orchids circled slowly about the perimeter of the dome, brushing past various marble figures from Greco-Roman lore, and then dove sharply down towards the girl in the seventh row, pulling up at the last minute to land delicately in her lap.

There was a moment's silence, and then the entire crowd burst into spontaneous applause. Zatanna bowed proudly, and signaled to her assistant (an earnest young man named Mark Buchanan) to get the grand finale ready. One didn't want to waste a moment like this.

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," she said with a laugh. "I can certainly see why Batman likes this town. But now, if you'll excuse me, I have an urgent appointment in the Other Realm, so we'll have to leave off for the time being – but you'll all be back here tomorrow night, won't you?"

"Yes!" shouted about three-fifths of the audience.

"What was that?" said Zatanna, putting a hand to her ear as though she hadn't quite heard the thunderous roar of support. "What did you say?"

"YES!"

Zatanna laughed again. _Merciful Merlin, Zee,_ she thought to herself, _you really are a shameless crowd-milker._

"All right, then," she said. "I'll see you back here tomorrow night – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel." (It was a dumb joke, but it got a few laughs.) "And now, I suppose there's nothing more to say – except –" and she raised her arms for dramatic effect – " _Annataz raepasid!_ "

Only a highly trained ear could have recognized that she hadn't said " _Annataz raeppasid_ ". This was deliberate, an application of a principle that she had learned from her father. "Remember, Zatanna," he had said, "don't lean too heavily on your own, inherited powers. There's no skill in that. At least 25% of the tricks in your show ought to be plain, old-fashioned sleight of hand – but they should be performed in such a way that the audience doesn't know which ones they are. That way, you preserve an air of mystery and enigma within your act – and it is this, more than anything else, that is truly essential to our craft."

In this last assertion, he was certainly correct – or, at any rate, so many professional magicians agree with him that it would be positively indecent to reveal what exactly Mark Buchanan did in his backstage nook, and how Zatanna contrived thereby to vanish in a burst of orange-yellow smoke. We will, therefore, proceed directly to the moment directly after the show, when Zatanna, as she took congratulations and signed autographs in the vestibule of the theater, was presented with the first serious disturbance of her visit.

* * *

"You'll be back tomorrow, of course, Commissioner?" said Zatanna.

"Naturally," said James Gordon, engulfing her delicate, long-nailed hand in his rough and callused paw. "Wouldn't miss it for the world. You've got the gift, my dear; stick with it and you'll be going places."

This might not have been quite the right phrase to use to someone who had already been everywhere from Ireland to Kharma, but Zatanna was sufficiently well-bred to appreciate the thought behind it. "Thank you, Commissioner," she said with a smile.

"Not at all," said Gordon. "Incidentally, there's something else…" and he dropped his voice, not conspicuously, but enough to conceal it beneath the babel of excited chatter. "Barbara, you know, quite wanted to be here tonight. We were talking the other day, and she mentioned that the only time she really regretted her vow of seclusion was when it prevented her from cheering on her friends in person; she didn't say so, but I'm pretty sure she had you and this show in mind. So I was wondering if you could sign a program for her – not that that would make up for it, of course, but it might make her feel a little better…"

"I'd be happy to," said Zatanna.

She pulled a program off the pile, and was just making it out " _To the little voice in our head, with love, from Zee_ " when she felt someone tugging at the sleeve of her coat. She glanced down, and saw a short, plump woman of about forty wringing her hands.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" she said.

"Ach, I hope zo," said the woman despondently. (Her accent surprised Zatanna, who hadn't realized that Gotham City had a large German-American population.) "It iss my little boy, my Emil. This afternoon, I go upstairs to call him to zupper, and, vhat do you think? he iss lying asleep on the floor of hiss bedroom. I zpeak to him, I shake him, but I cannot vake him. It hass been zix hours, and he hass not – how you zay – ztirred a muskle. Vhat is the matter, I cannot zay, but…"

"But you think it might be some sort of magical curse," said Zatanna, "and so you want me to come see what I can do about it. Is that it?"

The woman nodded gratefully.

"Very well," said Zatanna. "Wait for me out by the rear exit of the theater; as soon as I've finished giving these people their autographs, I'll come and meet you, and you can take me to Emil."


	3. Waking Emil

The woman's house was near the mouth of the Gotham River: a small Bludhaven tenement, far from luxurious, but respectable by the standards of Gotham's immigrant communities. Furthermore, it was clearly well cared for: there was a neatly tended flower-bed running along the side of the house, and the path to the door had been edged with stones collected from the river. There was a sense of quiet dignity about the place that made Zatanna feel almost intimidated: these weren't people that one would feel comfortable letting down.

She raised her hand to knock on the door, but, before her knuckles could make contact with the wood, the door creaked open of its own accord, and a tall, dark-eyed young woman gazed out silently at her from the doorway.

"Hello," said Zatanna. "You must be Emil's sister. Your mother brought me to see him."

The girl nodded. "This way," she said, in a voice less heavily accented than her mother's, but still discernibly the voice of one who had grown up in a non-English-speaking home. She turned and headed down the small hallway, and Zatanna, after a moment's hesitation, stepped across the threshold and followed behind her.

Emil's bedroom was at the far end of the house. Like everything else in the house, it was small (at least by Zatanna's standards), but it seemed even smaller than it was, for Emil seemed to be one of those boys who feel that your possessions aren't really yours unless you can strew them about on the floor. Clothes, toys, books, everything he owned was scattered higgledy-piggledy about the room, like flotsam that had washed up on the seashore after a shipwreck.

From his mother's account, Zatanna had expected Emil to still be lying on the floor along with it, but, when she saw him lying on his small bed, she realized how silly that had been. Of course, you wouldn't leave your son, even your enchanted son, lying about on a floor – least of all a floor as crowded as this.

Nor was this the only way in which the sleeping ten-year-old presented a sightlier appearance than Zatanna had anticipated. Lying on the bed, with his hands folded across his chest (his mother's doing, most likely) and a slight smile on his lips, he looked the very image of somnolent tranquillity. If he was under a spell of sleep, it was clearly unaccompanied by any spell of nightmare – which was good, Zatanna reflected, since it meant that the magic involved was unlikely to be particularly black.

 _Well, first things first,_ she thought, and pulled a small slate pyramid out of her pocket. This had been a gift from Dr. Fate, and had come in handy several times before – for it was, essentially, a magic-identifier. Because no two magicians in history had ever cast quite the same sort of spells, the pyramid, which had been so treated as to be astonishingly sensitive to variations in magical texture, could unfailingly indicate the caster of any spell, through elaborate patterns of color that appeared on its base. Of course, most of the patterns were completely meaningless to Zatanna (after all, there were thousands of wizards in the world, and myriads more long dead whose spells had outlived them), but she had learned to recognize the patterns signifying the magical malefactors who regularly tangled with the Justice League: Felix Faust, William Zard, and so on. It was an ability that had saved her and her colleagues' bacon on more than one occasion.

She now made a few passes over Emil's body with the pyramid, adding a few mystical-sounding words made up on the spur of the moment to keep his mother and sister satisfied (whether onstage or off, the Maid of Magic never forgot her audience). Then she flipped the pyramid over to see if it had picked up anything, and received a significant shock.

The pyramid had indeed found something. Colors were swarming about its base like barracudas about a wounded manatee, and, as she watched, they resolved themselves into a rippling pattern of alternating red, green, and purple lines. It was a pattern that was quite familiar to Zatanna, but not because it was the pattern of Felix Faust or William Zard; it was familiar to her because it was her own pattern. Every time she tested the pyramid on one of her own spells, to make sure it was still working at full potency, that rippling tricolor was the pattern she saw – but she certainly hadn't expected to see it here.

She stared at the pyramid for a long moment, while a succession of wild thoughts whirled about in her head. Was the pyramid saying that _she_ had put Emil to sleep? But that was ridiculous; she hadn't even known that he existed until half an hour ago. Besides, sending an innocent child into a state of impregnable unconsciousness… that was something Despero would do, not she.

She shook her head, and tried to focus. Clearly, the pyramid was being deceived by a style of magic similar to her own – some other distant descendant of Leonardo, perhaps. (The thought crossed her mind that perhaps her father was having a bit of fun with her, but she rejected it firmly; cursing unsuspecting innocents merely to get a laugh was no more Zatara's style than it was his daughter's.) In which case – unless this particular ananymomancer had figured out a way to block other people's ananymomancy – a simple spell of waking ought to undo the spell of sleep.

" _Lime ekawa!_ " she commanded.

For a moment, nothing happened; then a soft moan escaped from Emil's lips, and his eyes fluttered open and focused vaguely on Zatanna's face. "Who are you?" he murmured.

His mother let out a joyous cry and broke down in sobs, and the Maid of Magic permitted herself a small, victorious smile. "My name is Zatanna," she said.

"Oh, yeah," said Emil. "You're the lady on the posters. What are you doing here?" Zatanna noted that he spoke English without even his sister's trace of a foreign accent; perhaps he had been an infant when his family had emigrated, and so hadn't had the memory of a previous language to hinder him.

"Your mother asked me to come and have a look at you," she said. "You got her pretty worried, falling asleep in the middle of the day like that."

Emil blinked. "Was that what happened?" he said.

"Is it not what you remember?" said Zatanna.

"I don't remember much of anything," Emil said. "I was just playing with my Tonka truck when everything went kind of fuzzy, and the next thing I knew I lying on my bed looking at you." A sudden gurgling noise cut him off, and he grimaced. "Boy, I'm hungry. What time is it?"

"About nine," his sister volunteered.

Emil's jaw dropped. "You mean I've been asleep for six hours?" he demanded. "What happened? Did the Joker or somebody pump nerve gas into my room?" He was rather delighted by this possibility; like many young boys in Gotham City, he often dreamed of meeting Batman in person, and being specially targeted by the Clown Prince of Crime seemed like a step towards the realization of this dream.

"Six hours?" Zatanna repeated, a sudden suspicion dawning in her mind. "You mean you fell asleep at three o'clock?"

Emil hesitated. "About that, yeah," he said. "At least, I think so. Why?"

Zatanna shook her head. "It's nothing," she said. "Just that I think I might have an idea who put you to sleep."

"Who?" said Emil eagerly.

"I don't think I ought to say just now," said Zatanna, trying to project that air of a Keeper of Earth-Shattering Secrets that came so naturally to certain of her fellow Leaguers. "But, if it's who I think it is, I can assure you that you have no need to worry; it won't be happening again."

This enigmatic pronouncement sent such a delighted shiver down Emil's spine, and at the same time so reassured his mother and sister, that Zatanna had no need to say anything more; and when she went on to conjure them up three free tickets for her Tuesday-night show ("since the children had to miss the show tonight, and I can't imagine that you, ma'am, took much pleasure in it"), their good opinion of her was confirmed. The young woman (whose name, she learned, was Berthe) put together a bag of _schnecken_ for her to take back to her hotel, and the four of them parted company on the most amicable terms.

* * *

Unfortunately, as Zatanna made her way back to the main road to get a taxi back to the hotel, her own mind was completely bereft of the ease that she had instilled in the minds of her recent clients. Indeed, the mere fact that she was planning to spend money on a taxi, instead of simply speaking a word and materializing at the front door of the hotel, was evidence of the level of mental tumult that that nasty suspicion was causing her.

It was a ridiculous idea, of course. Her magic could surely tell the difference between a spell and a casual remark – and besides, if she could cast spells inadvertently, why had she never done so before? Surely, it was a bit paranoid to think that entering Gotham City should make her start losing control over her powers.

But suppose, she thought. Just suppose that she had wanted to cast a spell of sleep on a person named Emil; how would she go about it? Well, obviously, she would say the words "Emil sleep" backwards; in other words, " _Lime peels_ ". And she _had_ said "Lime peels" at around three o'clock that afternoon – not in the tone she usually used to cast a spell, admittedly, but then the tone didn't really matter; it was the words that were important.

And, being honest with herself, she had to admit that, if one accepted her words to the boy as a spell, everything else made perfect sense. That feisty little Bludhavenite had probably been the nearest Emil to her when she spoke the words (after all, it was scarcely a common name), so, in that sense, the magic had worked logically… and the pyramid, of course, would have been right after all. Had Zatanna been more of a detective, she would have felt a touch of satisfaction at the logical neatness of the whole solution.

As it was, however, all she felt was horror and self-loathing. To think that she had been responsible, however unwittingly, for a child's bewitchment and a mother's agonized worry: that was a new experience to Zatanna, and for a moment she considered going to GCPD headquarters and turning herself in as a danger to the community.

The next moment, though, her native good sense came to her aid, and she laughed aloud. "Now, Zee, there's no need for drastic measures," she said to herself. "It's probably never going to happen again; after all, how many words can there be that are other words spelled backwards? Just be a little more careful in the future, and you'll be fine."

And, with that happy thought, she flagged down a passing cab (for she had reached the main road by this time) and leaped into it with a brief, "Romero's Hotel, please."


	4. Déjà Vu All Over Again

A good night's sleep did its usual wonders for the Maid of Magic. By the time she woke up the next morning, Zatanna was amazed that she had ever thought she might be a menace to the people of Gotham City. It was so patently obvious that the lime-peel incident had been an isolated fluke; her power had saved so many lives, done so much good for so many people, how could she imagine that it was somehow dangerous?

She laughed at how silly she had been, and rolled over and pressed the intercom. "Hello, room service?" she said. "This is Suite 55. Could you… Yes, Zatanna's room. I'd like a half of a grapefruit, a chocolate éclair, and a copy of the _Daily Planet_ sent up to me. –That will be fine, thank you. –Well, I'm glad to hear it. I just hope you like tonight's show as well."

She switched off the intercom, rose from the bed, and conjured up a light silk wrap so she would be suitably covered when the bellhop arrived. (In any other hotel, she probably would have just gotten dressed, but the Romero, which specialized in making its guests feel like Petronius Arbiter relaxing in his villa after a hard night buttering up Nero, was not the sort of hotel where a person put on a suit until she absolutely had to.) Then, having nothing better to do, she wandered over to the window and gazed out at the street below.

It wasn't a particularly exciting scene that met her eyes. There were no rampaging supervillains wreaking havoc on the city plaza, no Batmobiles zooming past on their way to do battle with the forces of evil – only ordinary citizens of Gotham going about their ordinary lives: walking their dogs, chatting on cell phones, purchasing strange teriyaki concoctions from street vendors, and in general doing all the things that people do every day in a big city. But, for some reason (possibly because her dealings with Emil's family the previous day had left her unusually susceptible to the charm of everyday life; possibly because her relief upon deciding that she wasn't Gotham's Public Enemy No. 1 had spilled over into the rest of her psyche; possibly just because it was a beautiful day outside), the very homeliness of the scene filled her with delight. Batman, she thought, had good reason to dedicate himself to the protection of this city.

Her reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door. Zatanna was surprised – she hadn't expected the bellhop to arrive so soon – but she hastily pulled the wrap around herself and went to open the door, where she found a positively scrumptious-looking breakfast tray awaiting her. She thanked the bellhop profusely, gave him two dollars and her autograph on one of the napkins, and wheeled the tray inside to stand beside her bed.

Picking up the éclair with her left hand, she unfolded the newspaper with her right, feeling a slight pang of guilt as she did so. She really ought to have asked for the _Gotham Post_ , or one of the other local papers, rather than expecting the Romero staff to find a copy of a Metropolis newspaper on request. Still, she didn't know any of the reporters on the _Post_ , and she liked Kal's writing style. (Alternately, of course, she could have conjured up a copy on her own, but this was the Romero: you came here to be pampered, not to make everything yourself.)

She noticed, idly, that the paper quality of the _Planet_ seemed coarser than she remembered: evidently Mr. White had been serious about cutting production costs, the way Kal had told Bruce he'd been threatening to do. (How was it, she wondered in passing, that she could remember her fellow Leaguers' pre-meeting gossip from three weeks ago, but couldn't remember whether she'd given the bouquet to a boy or a girl last night?) But she didn't spend much time thinking about it, since she had no sooner unfolded the paper than she got a distinct shock. There, smiling out at her from the bottom part of the front page, was a photograph of an elegant, dark-haired woman in a green sweater – a woman who (apart from the sweater, which she wouldn't have been caught dead in) was a dead ringer for Zatanna herself.

Her blood froze; she thought of all the stories her fellow Leaguers had told of evil dream-constructs and duplicates from parallel dimensions. Hastily, she put down her éclair and gave the article accompanying the picture her complete attention.

"'Rucco May Reward Pupils'," she read aloud. "By Jimmy Olsen, Staff Reporter. 'For the past five years, Miss Geraldine Rucco, the 31-year-old science teacher at John Gorrie High School in downtown Metropolis, has presented the trophy to the winner of the Florida State Chemistry Bee. Now, for the first time, she may have an opportunity to present it to one of her own students. The sixteen finalists for the title, who will be going to Tallahassee on Friday to compete in the final stage of the Bee, include no fewer than seven Metropolitans…'"

She stopped reading, and let out a little sigh of relief. Nothing to worry about, then. No evil Zatanna just arrived from another universe: just a silly little local-interest story about a woman who'd apparently been a prominent member of her community for at least five years. Of course, the resemblance was still quite uncanny (if Zatanna hadn't known better, she would have sworn she was looking at one of her own publicity stills), but doubtless there was some good explanation for that. Maybe Miss Rucco was also a distant descendant of Leonardo – with a last name like that, she had to have roots in the old country – and the random shuffling of the great man's genes had somehow, after 800 years, managed to produce two virtually identical women. Anyway, there was no need to press the panic button over it.

(Though it did occur to her that, after her engagement in Gotham was finished, she should waft herself down to Metropolis and pay a call on Miss Geraldine Rucco. If she was a distant cousin of Zatanna's, maybe she had the same powers that Zatanna and her father did – and maybe she was as ignorant of the fact as Zatanna herself would have been, had it not been for her father's serendipitous enchantment of that lamp all those years ago. In which case, it would be a pleasure to enlighten her.)

She picked up her éclair again, and munched vaguely at it as she flipped through the rest of the paper. As might have been expected from the presence of a Chemistry-Bee story on the front page, it had been a slow news day: even Clark's piece about the ongoing investigation of the mayor's aide seemed to lack his usual zing. The only really compelling bit was in the "Universe" section, where someone named Wendy Dagmar had managed to get an exclusive interview with John Stewart about the Green Lantern Corps's recent defeat of a sentient black hole that called itself S'ronnoc. She read this with mild interest; then she folded the paper back up, put it aside, and began attacking her grapefruit half with the vigor of carefree omnipotence.

* * *

About half an hour later, she had finished her breakfast, dressed, and was heading downstairs in search of whatever adventures Gotham City offered on a Tuesday morning, when a strange commotion in the lobby caught her attention. An ambulance was parked outside the Romero's front doors, and two paramedics were weaving their way through the foyer, carrying a stretcher between them on which a heavyset black woman was alternately moaning in agony and shouting at someone or other to make sure the soup didn't boil over. It seemed to Zatanna that this called for an explanation, so she tapped the desk clerk on the shoulder and asked what was going on.

"Oh, just a little accident in the kitchens," said the clerk. "That's Wanda, the head cook. She was getting lunch ready, and she managed to drop the yam drawer on her foot."

"The yam drawer?" Zatanna repeated.

"Sure," said the clerk. "About a month ago, someone sent the hotel this huge sort of cabinet thing for the kitchens, with all kinds of drawers for vegetables and fruits and stuff – and Wanda fell in love with it, and she's been using it ever since. Dunno how she feels about it now, though," he added thoughtfully.

"What was she making that had yams in it, though?" said Zatanna. "I didn't see anything about _amala_ on the lunch menu for today."

"Oh, she wasn't actually using the yams," said the clerk. "The way she was telling it, she was reaching into the potato drawer, and the yam drawer just jumped out of the cabinet and landed smack dab on her foot. Just like magic." He said this in a rather sarcastic tone, and made a gesture with his left hand suggesting that, in his opinion, it was more likely that Wanda had been sampling the cooking sherry rather heavily.

A cold shiver ran down Zatanna's spine. "Like magic, was it?" she said.

The clerk blinked, and seemed to suddenly remember to whom he was speaking. "Oh, not that magical people go around dropping yam drawers on people's feet," he said hastily. "I just meant, you know, the way she talked about it – like it just happened without any reason…"

Zatanna held up a hand. "That's all right, Armand," she said. "I knew what you meant."

"Oh," said the clerk. "Well, that's good." He grinned uncertainly. "I mean, I'd hate to have someone like you thinking I'd insulted her. I've got a wife and three kids at home; the last thing I need is to get myself turned into a rat by the Witch-Lady of the JLA."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he winced, realizing that the Witch-Lady in question might consider that appellation an insult in its own right. Zatanna, however, didn't seem to have heard him. "So, was she badly hurt?" she said.

"Wanda, you mean?" said the clerk. "Well, her foot's probably broken now, of course – a drawer full of yams ain't exactly light – but I don't guess there was any permanent damage. A week or so in the hospital, then a month or two on crutches, and I expect she'll be right as rain again."

"Good," Zatanna murmured. "Good."

She smiled politely at the clerk, and turned and headed outside – more or less automatically, as all desire to explore Gotham, or to do anything else, had been drained out of her by horror. _Yam drawer_. _May reward_. _Rucco May Reward Pupils_. _Occur, Yam Drawer Slipup_.

She shuddered. Once was bad enough, but twice in under twenty-four hours… what was the matter with her? Was it just bad luck, or was there something more sinister going on?

She considered paying a call on Bruce, to see what he thought about the whole thing, but decided against it. She was a superheroine in her own right: she couldn't expect Batman to solve all her problems for her – and, anyway, Wayne Manor was over on the other end of Gotham City, and somehow she didn't feel like casting a teleportation spell just now. Better to just go for a walk and let herself calm down; there was nothing wrong with her (she told herself firmly) that a bit of fresh air couldn't fix.

She took a deep breath, tossed her hair back over her shoulders, and set her face in the direction of Gorshin Park.


	5. What I Tell You Three Times…

Gorshin Park was one of the few islands of serenity in the bustling ocean of humanity that was Gotham City. It had been built in 1953, when Mayor F. John Gorshin had decided that he needed a place where he could go for a few hours to forget about crime, taxation, the homeless, and all the other issues that got dropped regularly on his desk. Much of the rest of the populace had found, once it was built, that they shared this desire, and the Park had become one of the most popular locales in the city. No matter what the time of day, you could almost always find a soul or two feeding the pigeons, or watching the fountain bubble, or walking the unicursal labyrinth that was traced on a sandstone terrace near the park's center.

It was this labyrinth that Zatanna, about an hour later, found herself traversing. She had always liked unicursal labyrinths; there was something comforting about knowing that, however, many twists and turns the path took, one could never get lost on it. And she had just rounded the third bend when she heard a dry cough, and a voice saying, "Excuse me, but aren't you Zatanna?"

She looked up, and saw a nondescript-looking man with thick glasses and light-brown hair, wearing a gray suit and holding a copy of the _Gotham Post_. She sighed, expecting another autograph request. "Yes, I'm Zatanna."

The man nodded. "Yes, I thought you were," he said. "Glad I happened to meet you here. I was wondering if I could have your opinion on this S'ronnoc business."

"This what?" said Zatanna blankly.

The man seemed surprised. "I thought you would have seen it in the paper," he said. "That sentient black hole that the Green Lanterns exiled to Qward this morning."

"Oh, that," said Zatanna, remembering. "Yes, what about it?"

"Well, you and the League will, of course, be formally reprimanding John Stewart for the part he played in the affair, won't you?"

Whatever Zatanna had been expecting, it wasn't that. "Formally reprimand him?" she repeated. "Why on earth should we reprimand John? Why, he was one of the Lanterns who helped to bring S'ronnoc down."

"Exactly," said the man. "Because of his actions, a being whose only crime was to act as its nature dictated will now spend the rest of its existence – which is to say, forever – imprisoned in a glowing green sphere in an entirely foreign universe. Surely, an organization calling itself the _Justice_ League of America ought to frown upon such a thing."

Zatanna gaped at him for fully twenty seconds. She had known, in a vague, abstract sort of way, that there were people like this in the world, but she had led a sheltered life by superhero standards, and had not till now met any of them in the flesh.

When she had recovered her voice, she said icily, "Let me assure you, Mr.…?"

"Madden," said the man. "Gary W. Madden, Professor of Ethics at Heath College."

 _Ah, of course,_ thought Zatanna. She had often heard Batman allude to that Gothamite center of learning; "cesspool of moral relativism" was one of his kinder phrases.

"Let me assure you, Professor Madden," she said, "that the Justice League takes a much different view of S'ronnoc's crimes."

"Oh, come now," said Madden. "Surely you don't call it criminal for a black hole to swallow a star or two. Or do you also accuse the ocean when a tidal wave destroys a city?"

"That's entirely different," Zatanna snapped. (It was remarkable, she thought, how passionate she felt about this subject, considering that she hadn't even heard about it before that morning.) "Tidal waves are acts of God. They have no will of their own; they just do what the laws of physics tell them to do. S'ronnoc, on the other hand, was a sentient being with full locomotive capacities; it could freely choose what it did, and it chose to venture into populated star systems and absorb their suns to feed itself. That makes it a criminal."

Madden laughed aloud – a nasty, superior laugh, Zatanna thought. "How typical of the Defenders of the American Way," he said. "Either everyone in the universe behaves like a respectable, churchgoing Midwesterner, or else we strike them down without mercy because they are 'evil'."

"S'ronnoc _is_ evil," Zatanna insisted. "It…"

" _Was_ ," Madden corrected her. "Whatever the moral status of its past actions, I think we can both agree that it isn't likely to repeat them."

This seemed a silly objection to Zatanna, but she decided to let it stand rather than let herself get distracted from the central point. "All right, then," she said. "S'ronnoc _was_ evil. It was a threat to the security of the galaxy, it was intent on remaining so, and the Green Lantern Corps was perfectly within its rights in capturing it and removing it from this universe. Do you have any objections to that assessment?"

"Many," said Madden, "but I don't suppose you'd be interested in them. I merely wanted your organization to be aware of my views on the matter."

"All right," said Zatanna. "Consider us aware. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to finish walking this labyrinth."

Madden glanced down at the convoluted pathway with an expression of unconcealed distaste. "Good day, then," he said, and turned and strode briskly away.

Zatanna wondered, briefly, why he should dislike labyrinths. _Maybe the Riddler once imprisoned him in one,_ she thought; then, maliciously, _If so, it's too bad Bruce saved him._ And, with that, she dismissed the odious ethics professor from her mind and returned her attention to her walk.

* * *

After completing the labyrinth, she went over to a nearby bench and sat down. A spreading beech tree loomed over her, and for some minutes she watched the robins chirp and flutter among its branches with a feeling of deep contentment, and wished peace on the late Mayor Gorshin.

Then, suddenly, she became aware of a strange whining noise coming from somewhere behind her, and a series of odd thumping sounds that were almost, but not quite, like footsteps. Both noises, though soft at first, quickly grew louder and louder, and the robins seemed to find them quite alarming; they hopped around uncertainly for a moment or two, and then abruptly burst from the tree, their gentle chirps replaced by high-pitched cries of terror.

Zatanna turned in the direction of the noise to see what had frightened them off – and then her heart rose into her mouth as she saw the hideous monster heading towards her.

It was about the height of a small man, with bulging eyes mounted on a flat, rectangular body, which was mounted in turn on four stocky legs. It reminded Zatanna uncannily of L. Frank Baum's Sawhorse; there was the same suggestion about it of a piece of furniture that had walked away from its owner. But what most caught her eye, ironically enough, was something she could barely see: a silvery, whining _something_ that rose up between the creature's eyes, as though it were a unicorn with an invisible horn.

Invisible, but by no means harmless. Zatanna was instinctively sure that, whatever that horn-thing was, it would not be healthy to come into contact with it – and her intuition was vindicated a few moments later, when the monster drove itself head-first into the beech tree behind her, and sawdust began spraying out from its trunk like steam from a geyser. Zatanna yelped, leapt up from the bench, and threw herself into a defensive crouch.

She opened her mouth to cast a spell, but the sawdust was blowing directly at her face, and for a few seconds all she could do was cough and sputter. She turned her head away, raised an arm to protect herself against the spray, and shouted hoarsely, " _Erutaerc pots!_ "

The whining noise stopped abruptly, and after a minute or two Zatanna thought it safe to look up. What she saw bewildered her. Now that the creature was frozen – and, in particular, now that the thing between its eyes had stopped spinning – it could be seen for what it was: and what it was, quite plainly, was an animate table saw with an unusually large blade. It sounded like something out of a cartoon – and, indeed, the wide red eyes sprouting from the tabletop, and the grinning mouth with the long tongue that stood in place of the tilt-lock lever, gave it a very cartoonish appearance indeed – but there was no denying the reality of the thing.

While she was trying to process this, a young man ran up from the direction the saw-beast had come from. He was breathing heavily, and seemed to be greatly excited. "Hey, Miss Zatanna," he said, with something like relief in his voice. "Good thing you're here. I was afraid we'd have to call out Batman, and, from what I hear, it's a royal pain contacting him in the daytime."

Zatanna blinked. "I'm sorry," she said. "You are…?"

"Oh, right, sorry," said the boy, slapping himself on the forehead. "Jerry Connor's the name. My dad's Miles Connor, the one who owns the little woodworking shop on 25th and Main."

"A woodworking shop?" said Zatanna. "The kind that uses table saws?"

Jerry glanced at the frozen saw-beast with a grim look on his face. "Yeah, that's Dad's saw, all right," he said. "At least, it used to be; I dunno what it is now. Dad was working with it in the shop just now when it suddenly sprouted eyes and started thrashing around underneath him. Good thing he was just starting the cut: if he'd been right up next to the blade, the filthy thing would probably have put him in the hospital for a month. As it was, he nearly got his index finger sliced off."

Zatanna took a deep breath, and tried to piece everything together in her mind. This man, this Miles Connor, had been working in his woodworking shop when his saw had suddenly turned into a living being. It had escaped from his shop, apparently injuring him in the process, and had headed for Gorshin Park – probably because that was where the nearest trees were, and a living saw would naturally have an instinct to seek out live wood to cut. So much she could follow, although it was far and away the strangest story she'd heard in a month of Sundays.

All right, now: what would cause something like that to happen? Zatanna thought for a while, but came up blank. It was clearly magic of some kind, but what sort of magic would cause an absurd, random thing like…

A thought suddenly came to her, and she went cold. No. No, it couldn't be…

"Something wrong, ma'am?" said Jerry, noticing the sudden pallor of her face.

Zatanna swallowed. "I beg your pardon, Mr.… what did you say your last name was?"

"Connor," said the young man. "Jerry Connor."

"Um-hmm," said Zatanna. "And when did this business with your father's saw happen?"

Jerry shrugged. "Just a few minutes ago," he said. "Ten, fifteen, maybe. It came straight here, and I followed it as fast as I could."

"I see," said Zatanna dismally. _S'ronnoc was evil_. _Connor's saw, live_.

She closed her eyes, and forced herself to remain calm. There was a job to do; she couldn't let herself get hysterical. There would be time for that later, when she was safely back in her hotel room. Right now, she had to clean up the mess she'd made – for that she was the cause of everything that had happened, she no longer had any doubt.

She turned to the small crowd of park-goers that had assembled behind her, and gestured to a strong-looking fellow in a mock Gotham Raiders uniform. "Excuse me, sir," she said, "but could you see if you can dislodge our friend over there from the tree trunk? I think I'll be better able to restore it to its former state if I don't have to worry about killing city property in the process."


End file.
